Requirements for the Ideal Online RPG CMS

[azurelunatic]

-some social networking features, for mods, players, and characters.
-public, protected, group-protected, and admin-protected features
-Categorization features
-feed features
-filterable feed
-character profiles
-character profiles controlled by a player profile
-character profiles must be able to be set collectively, identically at once, or a mix of the two.
Separate player and character environments.

Technical support level.
Moderation level.
Player level.
Character level.
Audience level.

Ability to restrict OOC contact between character personae
Ability to restrict audience/player contact from characters.
Ability to restrict character contact to characters from the same game without showing a friendship between the characters.

Comments

[ataniell93.livejournal.com]

For many RPGs it depends, you know. For LW we've moved to a mod-controlled model, so that people cannot vandalise or "take their cookies and go home". The last thing we want is for a player who is contemplating leaving to be able to click a button and delete all their journals at once because they own them. Other RPGs are apparently fine with this; we think they're on crack.

Some RPGs would not want a feed.

I know of no RPG that doesn't want at least 20 icons per player character and the ability to customise layouts.

One thing that is the bane of LW is the fact that journals are all set to player time zones. We dislike the large modern dates and disallow the calendars on character pages, but we like to have a tiny actual real-world time/date for recapping. Things show up in the order posted on the friends page, but on the archives, this is moderated by player time zone. So that things which were posted from Australia appear to have been posted a day later than they actually were. Actual time/date on an RPG journal should always be in UTC.

One thing that I think is wholly unfortunate on an RPG system is audio posting. Even if mobile phones exist in the game world, I do not want to hear a phone post made by Emma for a character who is supposed to have Sendhil Ramamurthy's voice! Talk about breaking the enchantment... (The first time I heard Becky's tiny high-pitched voice trying to do Alastor at me over the phone it was all I could do to maintain.)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Those are very sensible comments. I especially like the remarks that prevent player vandalisation; even if it is "their" character.

[ataniell93.livejournal.com]

Goodness, you're cute! (ahem.)

We've been Fandom Wanked a lot at LW for continuing to keep our backstory after people left the game. Some people actually seem to think you should just "disappear" from people's thoughts and minds and history if your player leaves; it's bloody obnoxious.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

I respond well to flattery too :)

I can sort of see their argument ("but it's my character"), but the problem is if a character leaves with a player then the storyline is disrupted which causes greater problems for more people - and not to mention the narrative. Thus the players should disassociate themselves a little from their characters - as any good actor does.

[ataniell93.livejournal.com]

Pity there's all that ocean between us, then. :) I am better at flattery in person.

The "it's my character" argument has never seemed to hold up very well in terms of characters in a shared world that have loads of connections to other characters and shared history that was worked out with the moderators.

We don't let people bring in original characters any more unless they swear they are not planning to use it somewhere else and will not be heartbroken if we won't let them bahleet it all when their book sells. &c. Burnt too often.

http://lightningwar1942.pbwiki.com = all about my baby and virtual life :)

[azurelunatic]

So phone posting is not necessarily an RPG-friendly feature, but audio file posting would be lovely for ... well, think poor Minnie.

[ataniell93.livejournal.com]

Minnie who? I don't want it in LW, that's for sure.

(If you mean McGonagall, it would be worth your life to call her that. Though Endymion has been known to call her Nerve.)

[azurelunatic]

Minnie the Moocher. Tell me that an audio upload of that file in that particular scene, set to repeat if played, would not have been appropriate. :D

[ataniell93.livejournal.com]

Er, people read the game at work and in school libraries and in some cases on really old computers. So only (ONLY) if you have a choice about playing it.

[azurelunatic]

Makes sense. Autoplay is a thing of evil so far as I'm concerned.